As a Paris restaurateur and family man, life is now good for Audioslave rocker

By GENE STOUT, P-I POP MUSIC CRITIC

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, April 20, 2006

Photo: STEVEN LYON/SPECIAL TO THE P-I

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Chris Cornell (sitting in his new restaurant) remembers his early days as a starving musician when his job as a cook had its benefits.

Chris Cornell (sitting in his new restaurant) remembers his early days as a starving musician when his job as a cook had its benefits.

Photo: STEVEN LYON/SPECIAL TO THE P-I

As a Paris restaurateur and family man, life is now good for Audioslave rocker

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Long before he formed Soundgarden, Chris Cornell toiled as a fish handler for a Ballard seafood wholesaler, a little-known chapter in the life of the Seattle rock star.

"I did it for years, from my early teens on," he recalls. "My job was to wipe up the slime and throw away the fish guts. I met pretty much every sous-chef in town because they would come in and look around at what we had. I think we had the best wholesale seafood in town. The owner was impeccable about it."

Fast forward to springtime in Paris, 2006. The singer-guitarist once synonymous with the Seattle grunge scene is now a Paris restaurateur along with his wife, Vicky (a Paris-based publicist), and brother-in-law Nicholas Karayiannis (also known as DJ Nick Blast), the offspring of a renowned New York restaurant executive.

The new restaurant, Black Calavados (pronounced cuh-LAHV-uh-dos), is in a busy area of Paris -- just across from the Four Seasons Hotel and about five blocks from the Champs-Elysees. Cornell, reached by phone in Los Angeles a day before moving back to Paris, described it as a "restaurant-slash-bar where you're going to hear rock music."

"It's also very European," he said. "There's nothing really like it in Paris. It's a place where you can go and be dressed up or be in jeans. It doesn't matter, either way you'll be comfortable. Though it fits into the classic French-European atmosphere of Paris, it's not really about that."

Cornell's new role as Paris restaurateur isn't as great a leap as it may seem. After working for the Ballard seafood wholesaler, he became a sous-chef at Ray's Boathouse.

"At the time, being a musician and being interested in food weren't in any way related," he said. "But in the years I was a starving artist and working in restaurants as a cook, it wasn't so bad. I didn't have any money, but I could afford a guitar and I could afford an amp.

"I paid rent and usually shared a house with someone else, and my band would practice in the basement. And I had something to eat during the week because when I was at work, I could eat. I didn't mind working around food. I enjoyed it."

Cornell, 41, even dreamed of opening a restaurant one day, but rock 'n' roll intervened. Soundgarden became one of the emblematic bands of the so-called grunge era that brought international attention to Seattle's music scene in the late 1980s and early '90s. The band won two Grammy Awards. Years later, Cornell was ranked 12th in MTV's "22 Greatest Voices in Music" survey.

Dramatic changes

Cornell's status as a Paris celebrity is symbolic of the dramatic changes in his life during the past few years.

More than two years ago, he married Vicky Karayiannis, setting in motion a series of events he compares to being "reborn in almost every way." The couple has two children, 3-month-old Christopher and 18-month-old Toni. Cornell also has a nearly 6-year-old daughter from his previous marriage to Soundgarden's manager, Susan Silver, a star in her own right in the Seattle music community. Last fall, Cornell filed suit against Silver, alleging she mishandled his former band's royalty checks.

The 6-foot-3 rock star also is the face of men's fashion giant John Varvatos (you'll find him modeling Varvatos' latest menswear at www.johnvarvatos.com). Varvatos was looking for a rock icon rather than a traditional model. "We hit it off immediately," Cornell said.

And on the music front, Cornell's current band, Audioslave, launches a new album in June featuring a more soul- and R&B-influenced sound, a departure from the fiercely hard-rocking stance of previous albums. A worldwide tour will follow the album's release.

Looking back on his years with Soundgarden, the lanky rocker regrets that he didn't enjoy it more.

"While we were going through such an amazing period of our lives, none of us seemed particularly joyous about it. And that's sad to me," he said.

A period of depression and alcoholism followed Soundgarden's breakup in 1997. During this time Cornell also struggled through a solo career.

"I went through a serious crisis with depression where I didn't eat a whole meal every day. I was just kind of shutting down," he said. "I eventually found that the only way out of that was to change virtually everything in my life. That was a very frightening thing to do, but it was worthwhile. ... "

"But I felt there was something on the horizon that was going to be very big and I didn't know what it was going to be, but I felt like it was out there somewhere."

About 3 1/2 years ago, Cornell went through rehab for alcohol and substance abuse.

"It was something I didn't want to do and I guess I was intimidated by it. I thought I was smart enough and that it wasn't really necessary. But it got to the point where I had to do something."

Cornell doubts his relationship with Vicky would have survived without getting the alcohol demon off his back: "I mean, I would not have met her and we would not have had a relationship. The long and short of it is that she wouldn't have had anything to do with me," he said with a laugh.

Fatherhood, at least under the current circumstances, has brought out a new side of his character.

"I came from a childhood where I spent a lot of time alone and a lot of time just living with my imagination, and a certain amount of the adult world was kind of alienating," he said. "And I find now after spending a lot of time with my babies, they're my best friends. And I still find a certain part of the adult world alienating, so I'd rather just hang out with my kids."

Family life also has been a source of inspiration. In the title song to Audioslave's 2005 "Out of Exile" album, Cornell sings about his wife and daughter Toni:

"On the altar of a sunrise/ Was a wedding in the waves/ And inside her shone a young light/ From her labor I was saved."

"One of the main dilemmas that's pretty common to a lot of people who are getting older is the idea that maybe there's a finish line and that maybe there's a time in your life when you start to slow down and stop and smell the roses and just kind of settle into what will be a comfortable period in your life," he said.

"And I found that for me, that's never going to happen because that's absolutely the last thing I want. And I think that's a lot of why Vicky and I clicked so well -- we shared that attitude."

Things moved quickly

Perhaps this explains why Cornell, his wife and brother-in-law suddenly decided to open a restaurant.

"When Nicholas and I started talking about it, it went from a discussion to something happening very quickly. Real estate is the key, and once you find a place, you have to make up your mind. Are we going to do this or not? Because this isn't going to be here if we wait too long.

"We thought, 'Let's have this experience. Let's do it.' From there it was about just getting out of our own way."

Originally, Cornell and his brother-in-law were going to name the restaurant for their initials, BC -- "B" for Blast (Nicholas' DJ stage name) and "C" for Cornell. Then they discovered the restaurant's long history as La Calavados, a place where Orson Welles hung out and Eartha Kitt sang.

Because of its new black-lacquered interior, designed by Alexandre de Betak, producer of the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, they named the restaurant/nightclub Black Calavados, but still call it BC for short.

"When we were renovating the restaurant, we pretty much gutted it and discovered a beautiful fresco on the ceiling that someone guessed was from around 1780. That predates Lewis and Clark. That's fascinating to me," he said.

They hired a chef from Nobu, a sushi restaurant with locations in London, Tokyo, New York City and Malibu, but added their own touches to the menu.

"Nick and Vicky were raised in a restaurant family and they have a very familial Greek way of doing things. Nicholas was the one in charge at first, but bounced ideas off other people, particularly Vicky and I and my mother-in-law," Cornell said.

They held a "soft opening" launch party during Paris Fashion Week in early March that included such guests as rock singer Pink, designers John Galliano, Peter Dundas (Ungaro) and Ricardo Tischi (Givenchy); and models Natalia Vodianova, Jacquetta Wheeler, Audrey Marnay, Liya Kebede and Amanda Moore.

Cornell has embraced Paris as his new home, but hasn't lost his love for the Northwest's natural beauty.

"Paris is everything I never had growing up in Seattle," he said. "Which is a vast history, incredible architecture, and art everywhere that is age-old.

"It's the polar opposite of Seattle, where what was inspiring to me was the terrain, the mountains, the trees and water. I feel lucky to have grown up around that."